Archive for March, 2010

When you measure wealth in the “modern” mainstream way of looking at numbers in a bank account or in a wallet, you see boatloads of artificial discrepancies.

But when you measure wealth in the more traditional, and more futuristic, way of looking at important game skills such as health, knowledge, talent, insight, ability to work with others, and creativity, you can more easily see how the playing field is far more level, and you are well aware of how wealthy everyone around you really is, and in what ways they are wealthiest.

Can you imagine a bank account that listed your account balance the same way role playing games and Sim games do, with resources such as food, health, and magic counted instead of dollars or euros?

Or, what if we had social bank accounts that quantified our excess of physical resources (I’ve got extra wheatgrass seed today!), emotional resources (I’m looking for some companionship today!), Intellectual resources (I can explain the patterns of growth to you!), and spiritual resources, (I can help you see how your life is helping the whole of life itself evolve!).

Or how about a measurement system that kept track of the balance of your resources, showing you and others what you are most wealthy in, and what you are most deficient in at any given time. (Today, I’ve got 23% physical resources, 7% emotional resources, 50% intellectual resources, and 30% spiritual resources, so I’ve got plenty of ideas and compassion to offer, but I’m lacking in healthy physical stuff and seriously lacking in intimacy.)

What resources would you like to see be measured, in addition to, or instead of money?

Children are nearly always more evolved than their parents. And I mean that both metaphorically, and scientifically. The whole point of sexual reproduction is to combine the best biological qualities of two fairly different individuals, to produce an even better offspring. And that works on an ideological level too, where children naturally combine the different problem solving strategies of their parents into more complex and creative strategies.

When you think about it, it’s definitely reassuring to think that the children of today are naturally more adaptable, more capable, and more equipped to deal with today’s global environment than we adults are.

So when the kids start doing things quite different from what you’ve been doing, you know that chances are good that they’re doing exactly what needs to be done to take excellent care of life on Earth, and you can do whatever you can to provide them with the highest quality resources you’ve got to offer, and then get out of their way so that they can to do their evolutionary work as effectively as possible.

For my little five year old buddies, the tools I’m giving them are rope, tape, (recycled) paper, colored pencils, the idea that nothing is permanent, and a whole lot of amazing stories about normal people doing exceptional things.

I had the pleasure of meeting Grannie D a few years back, after her famous walk across the United States to raise awareness of the need for election reform. I’d reprinted one of her speeches in a zine I did, and gave her a copy of the zine, in thanks, and then she patted me on the head. Which was especially sweet because even though I’m quite short, she was quite a bit shorter, having lost a lot of her height over the 90 plus years she’d been in that body of hers (while clearly having grown drastically in metaphorical stature).

I found Grannie D’s spirit, her words, and her determination exceptionally inspiring. But most of all, from her, I found a path to a better future through her simple, lifelong idea of asking ourselves: “What can we do in the future so that love and respect are nurtured in the place of hatred?” I’ve been asking that question myself ever since I first looked to her for guidance after the World Trade Center buildings in New York City came crashing down nearly a decade ago. And my work today directly reflects this core idea which she offered me and everyone else her life touched.

Grannie D passed away recently, just after reaching her 100th birthday, and the following thoughts are from her eulogy, as offered by one of her best friends and political activist co-conspiritor, Dennis Burke:

A thousand people have told me that, when they reach her age, they want to be like Granny D. I have always agreed with them, but we have had it a little wrong. We must not wait until we are 90 or 100; we have to be, even today, a little more like Granny D. Our challenges will not wait for us to age.

Walking down long highways, I remember that sometimes she would want to look at the small things killed beside the road that others could not bear to look at. She was a great artist in fibers and colors, even in how she dressed. No one had a better sense of hat. She would see rich beauty in places where some would never dare look. She seems to have turned off her hearing aids for the lecture when the rest of us were told we must not look here or there, and told how some things must be presumed beautiful or ugly, true or false. She simply and always wanted to see for herself.

Too often we are told what to think, even about ourselves. We are encouraged to trivialize our lives; to participate in our own reduction to mere consumers of products, passive witnesses to history. She wanted to see for herself what she might become, what she might be capable of doing that was helpful to the people she loved, whom were honestly everyone. She could see no defects in others without measuring them against her own shortcomings. Her anger was real and righteous, but it was about things and actions — it never lodged in her heart for long against people, even those whose actions she most opposed.

…

The important thing Doris Haddock would have you remember was that she was no more special than you, and that you have the identical power and the responsibility to make a difference in the community and the world.

…

She would have us remember that our country is Our Town, that we each have the power and the responsibility to make a difference while we are alive, knowing that what we set in motion today will make a difference long after we are gone. Far more important than the old bodies we find ourselves patching up and hitching along, we are each also an idea and a vision of the world. We give the rising gift or dark weight of that vision to each person we deeply know. And that idea, that vision, is like the manuscript that grows from an old typewriter that will soon rust away to earth, leaving but the living manuscript. The Idea of us is the real us. The Idea is the living thing that survives because it lives on in our friends, survives in their hearts to help them better interpret and shape the world.

So, at the next turn of history and of opportunity, will we not wonder what Granny D would have said, would have thought? It is a part of us now, a measuring tool, something new in us that thinks like her. That is Doris alive and still walking with us.

Finally, she would want us to remember to keep working at things and to take walks every day if possible. To send Thank You notes. To keep asking for and expecting honorable change. To stay strong…

So, in memory of Grannie D, go for a walk, send a thank you note, expect and ask for change, stay strong, and continue to ask her most important question: What can we do to nurture more love and respect in the world?

The goal of the average business model is: to be able to get more. The goal of the exceptional, sustainable, and most rewarding business model is: to be able to give more.

In reality this is a more subtle difference than it might seem on the surface, as both goals lead to the same general position, because wherever we give more we also tend to be able to get more, and vice versa. But focusing on giving more – physically, emotionally, intellectually, and/or spiritually – tends to be more personally enjoyable, as the human brain rewards us with all kinds of pleasure chemicals for being procreative, and focusing on giving more also tends to be more predictably effective, as what we ourselves do is what we are most in control of in life. So, on an intellectual level (world-centric thinking), it is, therefore, easier and more fun to have a business model where the bottom line is giving as much as you can to the world.

And on the spiritual level (life-centric thinking) it is easier, more fun, and more inspiring to have a business model where the bottom line is to give things that allow individuals and whole societies to grow and evolve as much as possible.

So, when you think about what you’d most love to do while you’re working, which of the following do you find yourself most interested in giving the world more of:

• Whole Food

• Clean Water

• Fresh Air

• Healing Warmth

• Energizing Light

• The Freedom of Expression

Which one or combination of these healthy things are you most inspired to offer to the world?

I see inside you. I see who you are. I see your beautiful ideals. And I wish to help you find all the resources you need to make your dreams come true.

You are not here merely to make a living.
You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply,
with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement.
You are here to enrich the world…”

The usual goal of communication is, of course, to set up “the same thought” in the receiver’s brain as is currently taking place in the sender’s brain. The mode by which such replication is attempted is essentially a drastic compression of the complex symbolic dance occurring in the sender’s brain into a temporal chain of sounds or a string of visual signs, which are then absorbed by the receiver’s brain, where, by something like the reverse of said compression — a process that I will here term “just adding water” — a new symbolic dance is launched in the second brain. The human brain at one end drains the water out to produce “powdered food for thought,” and the one at the other end adds the water back, to produce full-fledged food for thought.

I’ll let you add your own water to this particular powdered thought… :-)

The only thing I can possibly ever be absolutely convinced is true, the only thing that is utterly scientifically provable beyond a shadow of doubt, is:

awareness

Awareness can also be named consciousness, perception, or even sensation. Awareness is the experience of something. And awareness is indeed the only thing that there is simply no question about. Awareness most definitely exists. In fact, awareness (or consciousness, perception, or sensation) can be said to be the very foundation of existence itself, with everything else emerging out of awareness. Anything else anyone tries to claim is “true”, no matter how convincing the evidence, is ultimately unprovable because I could very well be experiencing an illusion. Everything else – and I mean everything else – is nothing more than theory, possibility, and conjecture. Even the idea that there is something else to be aware of isn’t provable because it’s possible that there is nothing else and that awareness is simply aware of awareness itself like an ouroboros – the snake eating it’s own tail.

Of course, there does seem to be something else, and I’m very happy to entertain the idea of all kinds of other things being real, like rain, trees, the blue green marble that I call the Earth, very, very large things that go bang, my so very passionate husband, and an almost endless supply of ocean waves playfully dancing with the sand and stones all along the shores of this quaint old place that claims to be a slightly more recent version of England. But all I really know is that I experience something that gives me the sensation that these wonderful things exist.

I am conscious of you, while being conscious that you might be nothing more than a wondrous fantasy that plays within this awareness, but since nothing is provable, anything is possible.

meta

You count!

I am for you

I do not mean my body is for you,
because I cannot speak for her,
as my body speaks for herself,
sometimes clumsily
sometimes elegantly
sometimes weakly,
sometimes with great strength
and always most independently
and wordlessly.

- a home for myself, my honey, and CREATE Space - a community resource center with artists, teachers, and scientists in residence using creative and innovative solutions to helping everyone in the world get what they need to be more awesome!
- good quality raw food
- transportation from where I am to other interesting places! (I'm currently in Stockton Springs, Maine)
- non-rusty bicycle (an old mtn. bike for a 5'2" human)
- Help starting a global non-profit!
- A hug from DPM :-)